Anthropic plans to spend $100 million training 10,000 AI engineers through consulting firms. That's $10,000 per engineer. You could get the same education watching YouTube videos in your mom's basement for free, but those don't come with a certificate suitable for framing.
The consulting firms get paid to teach people how to use Claude. Anthropic pays the consulting firms. Anthropic makes Claude. This is a business model where you pay someone else to explain your own product to people who will then maybe buy your product. Efficiency.
Ten thousand AI engineers sounds impressive until you realize that's roughly how many people changed their LinkedIn title to "AI Engineer" last Tuesday. The barrier to entry here is knowing how to copy-paste API documentation and pretending you understand transformer architecture at networking events.
The partnership aspect deserves attention. Consulting firms love partnerships. They get to bill hours teaching prompt engineering to mid-level developers who will forget everything within six months when the next AI model launches. Job security through planned obsolescence.
Anthropic could have just released better documentation. They could have made video tutorials. They could have done literally anything other than funnel $100 million through consulting firms who will spend most of it on PowerPoint templates and team-building exercises. But where's the enterprise credibility in that?
This investment trains people to use a product that will be obsolete before the training program ends. By the time engineer number 9,847 finishes their certification, Claude 47 will be out and none of the training materials will apply anymore. The consulting firms know this. Anthropic knows this. The only people who don't know this are the 10,000 engineers about to waste six weeks of their lives learning deprecated skills.
Your portfolio just got dumber reading this headline.
Photo by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
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